Campaign against compulsory corona vaccination
How opponents of vaccination on Telegram call for fake job applications in nursing
In the current debate about compulsory vaccination, many nurses place job advertisements in newspapers. Not all of them are real.
© Jens Büttner / DPA
In the middle of the ongoing vaccination debate, job applications from allegedly unvaccinated nurses are piling up in the daily newspapers. But research has shown that not all of them are real – telegram groups specifically call for them.
Marina Hofker
Last weekend, several daily newspapers published job advertisements from allegedly unvaccinated nurses. In view of the decision to make corona vaccination compulsory for employees in clinics and nursing homes, which is to apply from March 16, this does not seem so unusual at first.
What is striking, however, is the accumulation of very similar advertisements. Research by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB) led to various telegram groups in which opponents of vaccination call for appropriate actions – it turns out that at least some of the advertisements are fake ads. The obvious goal: to prevent the decision to vaccinate after all.
The RBB journalist Andreas Rausch got the review of the newspaper advertisements rolling: In his report he is surprised when he takes a look at the “Bautzener advertisements sheet”. There he finds 126 job applications from nursing staff in just one issue. An accident? Rausch decides to investigate the matter – and makes random calls to 18 of the advertisements, most of which contain cell phone and landline numbers. With a result that is sobering at first glance: Because nobody speaks to the journalist, only very few even pick up. Most of the numbers are unassigned, including “0160-1234567890”. At this point at the latest, doubts arise about the authenticity of the job applications.
Vaccination opponents call for job applications on Telegram
Rausch also reported on his research on his private Twitter profile – which some users have reported. There he writes on Monday that he has now spoken to a nurse. She therefore did not want to give an interview – but the woman spoke of a “concentrated action that they had agreed to.”
The “Fränkischer Tag” is also one of the newspapers that have been flooded with job advertisements. More than 50 ads were placed in the Saturday edition. “This accumulation of similar advertisements is unusual. At first glance, it almost seemed as if it had been agreed upon,” said Gerhard Staudt, team leader for order management at Mediengruppe Oberfranken.
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The paper then started its own research and found what it was looking for in the Bamberg chat group “Stay awake”: There, unvaccinated nurses were called upon to post bundled newspaper advertisements. There is no irrefutable evidence of a connection between the call and the accumulation of similar-sounding advertisements. According to the report, the newspaper nevertheless suspects that the section of the newspaper “could have turned into a field of socio-political debate about compulsory vaccination”.
Next campaign planned in another daily newspaper
And last weekend’s actions have apparently already found imitators: in various Telegram groups, opponents of vaccination continue to call for collective advertisements to be placed in daily newspapers. Currently affected: The “Heilbronner Voice”. On Saturday, January 29th, job advertisements from nurses are to be posted there, which contain the terms “employed for many years”, “unvaccinated” and “03/16.” contain. In addition, the advertisements should be made anonymously using a code so that direct contact via telephone numbers is not possible.
Telegram chats like this one called for job applications from nurses.
© Screenshot Telegram
The newspaper itself has already made the planned campaign public. Media reports about the piling up of job applications from the weekend also triggered a wave in the “Heilbronner Voice”. “Since this morning we’ve done nothing but take care of these ads,” said editor-in-chief Uwe Ralf Heer on Monday stern. “We check every ad – and only run the ones that we’ve been able to verify are real.” So far, 20 fake ads have been exposed, all of which fit into the Telegram calls scheme.
However, not all ads are part of anti-vaccination campaigns. In fact, there are many care workers who are looking for new employment: the job portal Stepstone reported that in a recent study in December and January, 42 percent of care workers stated that they were looking for a new job. Various media also reported that they were able to verify job applications – for example, ZDF journalists checked the advertisements in the “Oberlausitzer Kurier” today. However, it is currently still difficult to estimate how many of all the job ads are genuine and how many are fake.
Sources: Radio Berlin-Brandenburg, Franconian day, Heilbronner voice, ZDFtoday, with dpa material